The ads and postcards flooding voters’ screens and mailboxes before this week’s under-the-radar Democratic congressional primary in New Jersey were incessant. Many were negative. Most were misleading.
But almost all shared a common theme: opposition to President Trump and his immigration policies.
Voter turnout surged.
More people cast ballots in the unusual wintertime race than in any Democratic congressional primary contest in New Jersey in 2024 — a presidential election year, with Senator Andy Kim, an anticorruption crusader, near the top of the ticket.
The winner of the Democratic primary to replace Gov. Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey’s 11th Congressional District remained too close to call late Friday, and election officials said they would continue counting ballots through the weekend.
Losers, however, were easier to identify.
Establishment political figures and the country’s most powerful pro-Israel lobbying group both took a hit as voters sent a strong message of opposition to Mr. Trump.
“Voters who want a Congress that will stand up to Trump are highly motivated,” said Micah Rasmussen, director of Rider University’s Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics.
“And they’re willing to vote on a cold Thursday if that’s what it takes.”
As of Friday night, fewer than 700 votes separated the two front-runners, with thousands of ballots still to count.
Analilia Mejia, a left-leaning political organizer backed by much of Congress’s liberal flank, was ahead with 29 percent of the vote. Tom Malinowski, a former House member and foreign policy authority who was targeted by a super PAC affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, had 28 percent. Nine other candidates trailed far behind them.
The PAC, United Democracy Project, spent at least $2.3 million to try to defeat Mr. Malinowski, a longtime supporter of Israel who has said he would not deny the Jewish state what it needs to defend itself, but has refused to rule out placing conditions on U.S. aid.
Patrick Dorton, a spokesman for the PAC, has said that its goal is to elect a pro-Israel majority in Congress, and that placing conditions on aid is “not a pro-Israel position.”
Mr. Malinowski had warned that AIPAC’s tactic was dangerous and could be replicated in November’s pivotal midterm congressional elections. On Friday, his campaign manager said he remained confident about his odds, “given the volume of votes still to be reported and the way mail-in ballots have broken through this race.”
Ms. Mejia entered the race late and trailed many of her opponents in fund-raising. Early internal surveys indicated that only about 5 percent of voters knew her name, she said.
United Democracy’s negative ads made no mention of Israel. Instead, they mainly criticized Mr. Malinowski for his vote for a bipartisan measure to authorize spending for immigration enforcement during Mr. Trump’s first term.
Ms. Mejia, the most left-leaning of the candidates and the only Democrat in the race to say she believed Israel had committed genocide in Gaza, appeared to have benefited most from the advertising blitz.
Mr. Dorton maintained that the outcome of Thursday’s race “was an anticipated possibility.”
On Friday, in a news conference, Ms. Mejia called the ads against Mr. Malinowski a “disgusting tactic” that confused voters and flooded the airwaves with misinformation.
But they also elevated immigration as a salient topic just as opposition to Mr. Trump’s immigration policies was intensifying in the weeks after federal agents shot and killed two people, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, in Minneapolis.
Speaking in both English and Spanish, Ms. Mejia acknowledged that her low-budget, come-from-behind showing was linked to her willingness to bluntly call for abolishing the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. The campaign’s dogged pursuit of younger voters and Latino residents was also vital to her strategy, she said.
Mr. Malinowski led in the early mail vote, but Election Day voters cut starkly toward Ms. Mejia, a trend she said was tied to her effort to talk about “people’s daily problems and existence.”
“It’s about how people are experiencing this economy and then wanting to hear their concerns spoken out loud,” said Ms. Mejia, who until 2019 led the state’s Working Families alliance, which successfully pressed for an increased minimum wage and paid employee leave.
“Folks are tired of the platitudes,” she said.
The race offered other signs that the state’s political status quo is rapidly unraveling.
Two prominent candidates for Ms. Sherrill’s seat were closely tied to the state’s traditional Democratic Party apparatus — Brendan Gill, an Essex County commissioner who ran former Gov. Philip D. Murphy’s first campaign, and Tahesha Way, Mr. Murphy’s lieutenant governor, who was a former Passaic County commissioner.
One of Mr. Malinowski’s staunchest boosters, on the other hand, was Mr. Kim, whose lawsuit during his 2024 race for the U.S. Senate led to the dismantling of a ballot system unique to New Jersey. Before Mr. Kim’s legal challenge, Democratic and Republican Party leaders routinely assigned their preferred candidates prominent spots on primary ballots, a position known as the “county line.” It was a benefit that studies showed almost always resulted in victory.
On Friday, after an election that offered no candidate that advantage, Mr. Gill and Ms. Way were both trailing well behind the two front-runners.
The winner of the primary will compete April 16 against the Republican nominee, Joe Hathaway, the mayor of Randolph, who ran uncontested, to serve out the eight remaining months of Ms. Sherrill’s term. Candidates hoping for a full, two-year House term must run again in November.
The North Jersey district includes parts of Morris, Essex and Passaic Counties. It was redrawn after the 2020 census, making it far safer for Democrats, and the Cook Political Report continues to rank the race as a “solid D.”
Mr. Dorton said the pro-Israel PAC remained focused on “who will serve the next full term in Congress.”
It is unclear whether outside spending might continue to influence the current race, or whether AIPAC’s attacks on Mr. Malinowski could in the end benefit Mr. Hathaway, who has aligned himself closely with Israel.
In December, Mr. Hathaway posted a message and a video on social media urging his Democratic opponents to sign a clear and “unequivocal” pledge to stand with Israel and New Jersey’s Jewish community. “Without excuses,” he wrote.
Hadar Susskind, president of the New Jewish Narrative, a progressive advocacy group focused on peace for Israelis and Palestinians, said he believed it was unlikely that AIPAC intentionally tried to boost a Democrat who had been openly critical of Israel to give the Republican candidate an edge in November.
“I don’t think it’s such 3-D chess that they wanted this outcome,” he said, adding, “It’s clearly a loss for them.”
The group’s more likely goal, he said, was “sending a message” to anyone unwilling to “follow their lead.”
Tracey Tully is a reporter for The Times who covers New Jersey, where she has lived for more than 20 years.
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